Been out in the pre-dawn clear chill peering at M264, or M239, whatever. The middle body of Orion's belt. Trying to bring forth a recollection of what that thing looked like through an 8 inch telescope on hot summer nights in Texas with mosquitoes chewing wherever bare skin showed.

The mosquitoes and the hot are easier to bring into focus than the look of that heavenly body under high magnification.

But what the heck. The light I was seeing a quarter century ago through that telescope probably was already a million or so years old before it shattered itself against the backside of my eyeballs. Maybe older. This morning the light from that body I've been looking at is almost exactly the same age, just got a later start out of the chute by 30 years or so.

Wonder how things are over there now, this morning, in that cluster or nebula. A lot of stuff can happen in a million or three years. Lightbulbs burn out. Spark plugs need changing. All manner of stuff to upset the apple cart and keep some cluster of stars from providing amusement and conversational material to our progeny a million or so years from now.